Pop Culture Happy Hour - Watch This: Murderbot

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Murderbot is a very smart, very funny new sci-fi comedy series on Apple TV+. The show stars Alexander Skarsgård as a cyborg who works security for a team of hapless, bumbling scientists exploring a dangerous planet. Murderbot hacked its own system and gained free will – a fact it tries to hide from the team, even as it sardonically judges their naïve and foolhardy actions, and craves nothing more than to be left alone to watch soap operas.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Murderbot is a very smart, very funny new sci-fi comedy series. It stars Alexander Scarsgaard as a cyborg who works security for a team of hapless, bumbling scientists exploring a dangerous planet. He's hacked his own system and gained free will, a fact he tries to hide from them, even as he sardonically judges their naive and foolhardy actions and craves nothing more than to be left alone to watch his soap operas. I hear you, buddy. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about the Apple TV Plus series MurderBot on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Joining me today is podcast host and book person who writes the Greta Graham newsletter Greta Johnson. Hey Greta. Hey, Glenn. Hey, also with us is filmmaker, pop culture critic and I heart radio producer Joelle Monique. Hey, Joelle. What's up, Glenn? What's up indeed? And rounding out the panel is Kristen Mineser. She co-hosts the Daily Fail, a podcast that does comedic close readings of the tabloids, hey, Kristen. Hey, great to be back, Glenn. Great to have you. And this is, look, for a show called Murderer Bot, we need a murderer's row of a panel, and we got one. I'm so glad.

to have you all here. On Murder Bot, Alexander Scarsguard plays a downmarket cyborg security guard to a team of space scientists. They call him SEC Unit, but he secretly refers to himself as MurderBot, not because he's particularly homicidal, but because he thinks it sounds cool. How about Freedom Units? Or Rogue Bots? No, that sucks. Maybe murder? The scientists are basically space hippies whose noble ideals place them out of sync with the ruthlessly capitalistic society they live in. They don't realize that murder bot is more than just a robot. He is a sarcastic, vaguely depressive, sentient organism who has quietly overridden his programming, even if he still does feel a bit protective of the scientists.

Those scientists include Noma de Mezzuini as Dr. Mensa, the team leader, who trusts Murder Bot, and the great David Dasmolchin as Dr. Garathan, a cybernetically augmented human who very much does not trust MurderBot. When the scientists get targeted by some mysterious people with malicious intent, MurderBot proves his medal by saving their lives numerous times. This engenders in them feelings of affection for him. Feelings that puzzle MurderBot, even as he realizes that, annoyingly enough, he may be starting to feel something similar for them. MurderBot is based on a popular award-winning book series by Martha Wells. It is now streaming on Apple TV Plus. Kristen, kick us off. What'd you think? I loved it. I loved this show. I thought it had the right mix of fun, action, and humanity that I want in a sci-fi adventure show like this.

I thought the juxtaposition between the hippie astronauts and our cyborg. It was hilarious and also pointed to what does it mean to be noble? What does it mean to be human in a way that didn't feel like a copy of other things I've seen? seen before. Sure. I also have to say I just love that it poked fun at the sci-fi genre through its constant references to that soap opera that you mentioned, this kind of made-up Star Trek sort of show.

But it did it in a way that also served the bigger story rather than just being a winky, winky gimmick. So I appreciated all of that. I devoured all of this in two settings. Spoiler, I'm in your cap. But Greta, now you've read the books. What do you think of this? Yes.

I am a huge book fan and I, to be honest, was a little nervous about how this would be adapted just because I see that. I mean, it is action-packed. The books are as well, but like the interiority of murderbot obviously is such a huge part of the books that wondering how that would end up on the screen was a huge question mark for me. And also, honestly, the soap opera element too. Like he refers to it a lot in these stories. but to figure out how to pull that off as a device in the TV show, I was concerned and I was I was very happy with how that turned out. Okay, good to hear. All right. Joelle, what about you?

You read the books too. I have. I have. I read the first two so far. I really enjoy them. I found the adaptation element of this really interesting. The television plot is really heavy in the book, and it's adapted very well here. I was really surprised by how they were able to.

who both blend the levels of comedy with the sci-fi. I think Apple does a really good job with science fiction television programming. I do have some questions about the style. I'm really excited to talk to you guys about it pinged against me, but I didn't think it was the wrong decision, which is an interesting camp to be in. The way I envisioned it in my head is a little different than what I got, but I'm not upset about the adaptation. And I thought the cast of characters were so fun to follow.

And it's an easy watch. It feels like a throwback to like classic sitcom TV, which is not necessarily what you expect out of a science fiction show, but it works here. So I'm mostly positive with a few queries. Okay. So, Joelle, how did you picture it? I'm curious because now that you mentioned that, I do feel like the colors are brighter than maybe I pictured in my head. Is that what you're talking about when you say? There's zero blue filter here, which is a choice I love.

But when you're reading the book about a high-tech. murder bot what you think of is like super sleek like really high tech gray scale yeah yeah like joints that function and instead what you get is like a human in a costume here yeah yeah sure but because of the story of like humanoid who doesn't view themselves as human at all in a robot starting to feel emotions it kind of works like even the tech is sort of i mean everything sort of looks like it might be like three years in our future and not 50 85 90 years in our future that was sort of the disconnect at first. I was like, huh, this looks different.

It's bright. This planet could just be planet Earth. The sky is blue. The grass is green. There are trees and mountains. It's so familiar. Everyone's wearing sweater vests. There's a lot of sweater vests.

Yeah, all of the costuming feels very tangible, could pick up in a store today. And from that element, I was like, oh, this feels strange and lower budget than what I anticipated. And yet, Kristen, you mentioned how much heart there is in this show. You kind of get over it really fast. And then the comedy starts to hit. And so, yeah, so I came around on the look.

But it was an adjustment at first. Yeah, I see that because it opens in the very familiar sci-fi world of mining rights and, you know, those steel, like, walkways and, you know, the alien kind of thing that we've been getting. And then it changes it up. What did I think of this show? First of all, to ask a question, are you all familiar with the, I think it's a 50 song called, like, Lollipop. Lollipop. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course.

Right? I saw these screeners about a week ago ever since. You can catch me, kind of puttering on the house, muttering to myself, Murder bot, murder, murder, murder, murder, murder. Perfect. Squelch. Because I, like Kristen, love this. This show is for glens, the glens of the world.

I lost count of how many things it got righteous out of the gate. Because, again, it's based on a book series that I have not read, but the book series is called Murder About Diaries. So we know we're going to get that voice over to your point, Greta. Yes, yes. And voiceover is not a red flag, but it's fraught. Oh, yes. Well, especially it's exposition heavy, especially in those early episodes. Exactly.

But here's the thing. This is a textbook case on how to use voiceover because it's like when it's used, it's used. It's not relied upon. It's used to characterize, individualize, personify, particularize, sec unit. I call them sec unit. I can't bring myself to call them murderbot. I like sec. Secky also.

Not going to go that far. Personally me, but you do you. But it's also used for jokes, right? Jokes that undercut or contradict what we're watching. And, you know, I love this format. I mean, I think that's a big part of it, this half-hour sitcom 10-episode season. Give it to me. Yet in those time constraints, each member of this scientific team is given time and room enough to distinguish themselves from each other,

to be weird in their own individual ways such that I started to feel about them the way that SECN it does by the end, which means I can still find them silly and annoying. I kind of love them. kind of want to hang with them. And the jokes at their expense are not just look at these space hippies, right? Those jokes that we get about them and among them are not lazy. They're particular to each character. Lastly, you know, not for nothing. I said the show was for Glenn's. I meant that like people who share my sensibility. I also mean it is very much for me. The degree to which I identify with SEC unit is probably something I should take up with some kind of licensed professional. I felt seen. I felt targeted. I felt singled out.

And we should mention that people with autism have pointed out how our murder bot is certainly autistic coded and Hayes been embraced by the neurodivergent community. And I think that's very true. It's an additional resonance to this story. It's fully there if you find it. But if you don't, it's not like this story collapses. Like this story still works. This character still works. Because at the end of the day, what they've made here is a show that takes on, to Kristen's point, one of the oldest, most cliche, you know, of sci-fi premises. The horriest, HOA. are I-E-S-D, just to be clear, don't get it twisted, which is, what does it mean to be human? And it mines it for comedy gold. It finds a fresh patch of real estate to do something with. And my worry, though, is that with a name like MurderBot, it's going to find its book people, the people who love the books. It's going to find its sci-fi people. Yes. But there is a huge audience of comedy nerds that it might not give this a shot. And, man, I think they should. Yeah, they absolutely should. And I love that you brought up the length of each episode also, 25 to 30 minutes.

It's not like other sci-fi shows that are out there covering the same ground. It's not brooding and long and paste in a way for deep contemplation. It goes snap, snap, snap. But it's done so beautifully. And oftentimes I'd be laughing so hard. At the same time, something in my heart would just be pinched. And I'd feel like, oh, my gosh, this is being done beautifully in a way that as far as the neurodivergion divergent coding of murder bot, it's so touching because they never make fun of him for that,

if that makes sense. They treat him with great compassion. And in many cases, he's the most honest, the most logical, the most observant. And also maybe just saying things out loud that the rest of us feel about fellow humans all the time. Yes, yes. Humans are gross. Feelings are messy. Yes. Like, what's up with these like body liquids all the time? What's up when they really do just want to talk about their kids without being prompted? And they're going to. to do it. You know, he's so funny and so human. And it really is done in such a compassionate way, I think, for MurderBot himself or Sec Unit, whatever you want to call him. Can we talk about the performance of MurderBot a bit? So I'm an Alexander Skarsgaard Stan. And so I always pictured Michael

and Sara, who is the voice of Mr. Freeze and Batman the animated series when I was reading these books. Completely emotionless, like monotone, but still is. able to inflect a point of view. And I was flopping back and forth between I love this sort of depressed. I'd rather be anywhere else than here doing this job. Like, I'll give you the bare minimum. Like, they're human vibe. Sort of missing like, oh, was he ever a robot? And as a science fiction, like, kind of junkie, like, that's a little bit of a hard road to tug because you're just like, he feels so human. Like, is it too human from the top? And I felt like, there wasn't a lot of change from where we started with him to where we end with him.

And part of me is like really excited about that because it means that he was just always himself and maybe that's the point. But the part of me is like, isn't the journey point of like, is he supposed to become more human? And then the part that I love the most about the book was like, oh, humans can never understand him because he is not one of them. But they can have love and respect for him. And that has a lot of value. I think I discovered the book series when I was diagnosed both as depressed and ADD. So it was like a real awakening moment to be like, oh, wow, here's a character who is dealing with a lot of the same things. I'm dealing with who would rather just be home watching TV and not talking to people.

I would love to hear your guys as opinion because I felt a little bit internally conflicted about the choice. Like I think I wanted a stronger choice, but I'm not sure in which direction. That's really interesting. I did have a similar, like I don't know that it needed to be. Alexander Scars Guard necessarily. But I do want to shout out Kevin R. Free, who narrates the audiobooks and does a beautiful job doing Joelle exactly what you're talking about, where like he is intentionally much more sort of like static and robotic in the earlier books. And as MurderBot like becomes more humanish, he like becomes more expressive in his

narration, which is amazing. So just to say that, good job, Kevin. I'll say as somebody who never read the books. I went in, you know, having no idea. And the first couple of episodes, it did, even though I love the whole series, the first couple episodes, it did take me a little while to warm up to Murder Bot because he isn't really very human in the first couple episodes the way I perceived it and he becomes more human as we go along. The first two episodes also are a lot of stage setting, world building and showing us who each character is and so on. But I felt at least, you know, in my viewing that I did see him become slightly more human. and I came to like him a lot more as the show went on. Initially, I'm like, I don't know about him. I'm not sure.

But by episode three, I'm like, yeah, murder bot. Secure the perimeter. Yes, secure that perimeter. If I could just excuse myself and go secure the perimeter at any point, my life would be so much easier. I think the show really handled that smartly because we hear him in the very first scene where he overrides his control chip or whatever. He's so thrilled by that.

He gets us, yeah. But we don't see his face. That's important. I think we are set up to kind of hear that he actually has all these emotions. He's awash in these emotions, but he's not showing them. And then when we finally see his face, I think Scars Guard's pretty terrific. I think he conveys a lot in a very subtle shift of expression because you can tell from his expression that he thinks he's, if not the smartest one in the room, the most capable, the most prepared. And then the humans come to him being messy with their emotions and tell him about their children and he's completely lost and incapable.

And there's a thing he does in those scenes with his eyebrows that's very subtle, but it's just like he's. puzzled and flashback to college when people would just come up to you and start telling you about their feelings. It enters into the tone of the show. I want to go back to something you said, Joel, about the look of the show, because on paper, this view of the future is a dystopian, ultra-capitalist existence, blah, blah, blah, mining rights, blah, blah, blah, blah, like straight down the middle, sci-fi stuff. But I think this show, and I think the look of the show, the brightness of the show, like the physical brightness of the show, the show ends up being kind of sweet. Maybe even hopeful, maybe even, you know, humanist. Yeah. It made me want to read the books.

And what would I get out of the books that I'm not getting here or vice versa? Yeah, they're all super short books, too. I mean, they're quick reads. So I would say, like, there's really no reason not to read them. Yeah, that's what it heard. It's like a three-hour read. Yeah, they're easy, fun little trips. I started reading them during the pandemic and it was just such a joy because it's just like, oh, yeah, my buddy murder bot.

It's just delightful. Yeah, it's homie. You watch it with your friends. It is cozy. Yeah. It's almost a cozy TV series. It's like... It's totally a cozy TV series. It's like one little hut on a planet for the most part, like single setting. Yeah. I also love what it does with another potentially overwrought sci-fi trope, which is free will.

Yeah. Like I think that layer of it where he's trying to figure out, you know, once he doesn't have to obey everything humans say, what does he do with that power? Or is it a liability is also super interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I just want to give a shout out. beyond Alexander Scarsguard, Noma de Meswini, as Dr. Mensa, the captain of the ship, I would watch her do anything. She was so charismatic, so magnetic. I believed in her decency from the second she steps on screen. We are not comfortable with the idea of a sentient construct being required to work for us.

we feel it's tantamant to enslavement. And the way she deals with her crew, the way she deals with her own instincts, what is the decent thing versus what is the safe thing and so on. And I just think that she is just a beautiful character. And I would love to watch her in all sorts of adventures in space on the ground, in a sweater vest, wherever she is. I thought she was fantastic. Captain's experiencing real fear is like such a joy for me.

I feel like oftentimes, particularly like in a my mind. American media leaders are never depicted as being genuinely afraid. Or if they are, it's a thing that's shored up before they enter battle. Or like, I'm just put on my mask and like, let's go. She's like trembling so much at a lot of different points. And again, it just brings a level of like humanity and authenticity. And it amplifies her bravery so much to see her sort of walk through it with that fear. Also a shout out to David Desmaltzian because like he's playing a character.

It's not too far afield from other characters. he's played. But this script and this performance, there's a generosity of spirit. He's the squirly guy on the ship, but he's not just the squirly guy on the ship. He's allowed to breathe a little bit. And I think also, the other thing I want to tell people who might skip this show is that you're going to see the trailer. There's some violence in the trailer. There is some violence in the show.

But it's not the glib violence of the boys or Deadpool that makes you just want to lie down. Just let the world go by. There's one particular act of violence I'm thinking of in this show that you think, okay, they're just going to play this for laughs. And they kind of do. But then the team is kind of still reeling from that violence episodes later because that's how violence works on people in the real world. And especially how it would work on these space hippies, these soft, you know, it would

work on them in that way. And again, they each get a chance to react to it differently because this sec unit is cynical, but the show around him isn't. And I just want people to try it out. I want to shout the show from the rooftops. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, you heard what we think.

We kind of dig it. We want to know what you think about. Murderbots. Don't let the title scare you away. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH. And that brings us to the end of our show. Greta Johnson, Kristen Mineser, Joel Monique. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show on public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episode. Sponsor-free. So please go find out more. at plus.npr.org slash happy hour

or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hopsafathema and edited by Mike Katsif and Jessica Reedy and hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.